Received Mon Dec 15, 2008

Dear Family,

I wrote a letter today that I am going to send home. I've been wanting to write one for a while but whenever we get home on P-Day it is time to get out and start working again. But we were stuck inside for an hour one day, so I started a letter home then finished it this morning.

I got the package with letters and the flash drive! I got it on Tuesday. I wrote a lot of my letter about the things in there.

The weather has been CRAZY here recently. When I started to write the letter on Wednesday it was actually snowing here in Galveston. Its been pretty cold 5-6 days out of the week, so I usually wear that blue windbreaker and a longs leeve shirt. Gloves and a beanie and all that cold stuff I asked for will probably get put to good use. The wind is what makes it so cold. We almost never ride along Seawall anymore because the wind is always so strong there and it freezes your face.

Elder Pedersen and I decided to start a tradition last night. Every day we are going to write a highlight of the day in our planners. We tried to think of everything that happened this last week and these are a few of the highlights we had:

Monday: For P-day we went and played softball for 2 hours then football for an hour and a half after that. All the districts in the zone were invited. We had probably 16-18 people, so it was perfect teams. It was a ton of fun, but we paid bad for it after. I was sore for 4 days straight. Elder Pedersen was sore for 5 days. I now know what it feels like to be 90 years old. Once you sit down you dont want to get up because it hurts. Getting on and off our bikes was the worst. It was definitely worth it though, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. That was also the day Kim had a big Myspace fiasco where her "friends" from sugarland started threatening her on myspace and said some really bad things to her. She was really freaked out so we had to go give her advice and help her out. Myspaces are so stupid...never ever make one. All I ever hear about is drama that comes from it.

Tuesday: We visited some lady we met named Charlene. She invited us into her house and it was a mess. Not only was there trash and random furniture everywhere but it was like a zoo in there. Every corner we turned we saw more dogs in cages or tied up somewhere. Then she told us about her bird collection. The storm destroyed her bird room, so she put all of her birds in the kitchen. We went in there and there were probably 10 birds in different cages all over the place. They were loud birds too, like parrots, cockatoos, and other big birds. The place stunk pretty bad. I've come to realize how many people are weird and you never know what is going on inside someones house. All the houses look normal on the outside, but when you go inside you never know what to expect.

Thursday: This was the day that the Lone Star Rally started. Apparently this is a nationwide motorcycle rally that lasts for 4 days. They have it every year in Galveston. Bikers from across the country ride down here and there are a bunch of streets blocked off with stands set up for bikers to spend their money at. All we've been hearing all day long are loud motorcycles riding around everywhere. It feels like the whole island is rumbling. There are literally thousands of bikers here. There arent as many as there usually is though because the rally had to get rescheduled because of the storm. Last year there were apparently 100,000 of them. They're all gone now though, so thats nice.

Friday: We had our Zone Meeting that day and I gave a talk. A lot of people complimented me on the talk and told me it was really good, so that was satisfying.

Saturday: A big drama story happened with the missionaries today. Apparently some missionaries from different areas decided to take the day off and go check out the Lone Star Rally. A lot of the missionaries were lying and Elder Pedersen had to stay up really late trying to figure things out, which means I had to stay up late too. I was pretty tired on Sunday. Earlier in the day we gave a baptismal date to Angie though. Angie is Max's (LotR guy) girlfriend. Her date is January 24th. Shes definitely got some things to work out, but she wants to be baptized and we figured giving her a date to work towards would give her some motivation and kind of a kick to start doing better. -Sunday: We visited a recent convert named Abraham. This man can talk and talk and talk and talk. Then talk some more. He never takes a breathe. This is the guy who just barely got married and his wife (Paulette) and daughter (Kim) are the ones we just baptized. His daughter is at her mom's house and Paulette is in Dallas with her daughter who just had a baby, so Abraham has been home alone. He let it ALL out when we visited him. We were there for 2 1/2 hours and we didnt say a word in response to his stories because he never slowed down! I'm glad we went though, it did a lot of good for him.

So, thats what I've been up to! Everything I wanted to write about I wrote in there. I like this Highlights of the Day idea though...it makes things more fun and it gives me things to talk about. So much always happens every day, but its hard to remember it all. I also realized that last week I hit my 5 month mark! I'm gonna hit my 6 month mark by the end of the transfer too.

Oh yeah, so on Christmas we are going to have a Zone Conference in Sugar Land and we are going to open all our presents together afterwards. We can either call home on Christmas Eve after 7 or on Christmas Day after 7. What do you guys prefer?? I dont know if I really have a preference. I'll try to think about it and see if one day is better than the other.

Ok, that is everything. I hope you enjoy my long e-mail! I love you all and will talk to everyone later!
Love,
Chase